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Wilde Thing

Buried in the footnotes of Richard Ellmann's magisterial biography of Oscar Wilde (oh, look it up on amazon.com yourself) is a charming anecdote.

Whatever you might make of Wilde's sleeping arrangements, he seemed like a profoundly nice man. That's rare enough among men with intellectual gifts that it sort of sticks out.

But to the anecdote: On his first (or was it second? Where's amazon.com when you need it?) trip to America, he was the guest of honor at a dinner party in Pittsburgh.

The hostess shyly confessed that she, too, wrote poetry (Wilde was much more famous in the era for his poetry than his plays or novels or aphorisms), but that she would perhaps wait until she passed on before publishing it.

Wilde shook his head: "My dear Madam, do not depend on that. There are no publishers in Heaven."

Tossed off in a footnote. I'd kill to have it chiselled on my headstone.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on July 30, 2003 3:31 PM.

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